


We're Only Two

by Adm_Hawthorne



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:57:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4457432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adm_Hawthorne/pseuds/Adm_Hawthorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment in time when Henry is still in daycare... He doesn't want to go, much to Regina's irritation. Family feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once Upon a Time is owned by Disney and other people who make more in a minute than I have in my entire life. I make no money from this story and gain nothing. Please don't sue me.

“Puppy!”

“Yes, little prince, that’s a puppy,” Regina responds absentmindedly as she flips through the paper. She’d given up having a peaceful morning about the time her son had learned to talk. Now that he could start to really form sentences, she’d learned how to auto respond while she did other things. It was good he was learning so quickly, she reasoned, but it was a touch annoying that he had to talk all the time.

Today he’d brought his favorite animal book with him to the table so he could read like Mommy reads in the morning, which meant half her time was dedicated to responding to his remarks about the things in the book every two or three seconds.

“Goes ‘bark’!” He barked a few times and then giggled.

She looked around her paper to give him an indulgent little smile. “Puppies do bark, but do you know what little princes do?” She raised an eyebrow, smirking a touch.

“Ummm…” He pretended to think about it for a moment. “They bark, too!” Henry gave a few little puppy yelps and grinned at her.

She sighed at him. It was hard to be annoyed when he was being cute. “Perhaps, but they also eat their breakfast.”

“Don’t wanna,” he pouted. Suddenly, he shoved his bowl of cereal away and crossed her arms. “No.”

Slowly, she put her paper down. From experience, she knew this could go one of two ways, and she wasn’t really in the headspace for a tantrum. She had a meeting with Gold today, which meant she needed to reserve what patience she had for dealing with him. She really couldn’t afford to deal with Gold _and_ her son.

“Henry,” she schooled her voice to remain calm despite the slight tinge of frustration she could feel creeping into it, “why don’t you want to eat?”

“You’ll go away.” He pouted at her, his little lip sticking out.

She took in a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this talk. “But I always come back, and you know I have to go to work.”

“I wanna go with you,” he whined.

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be a good idea.” She reached out to place her hand on his little arm and rub it gently. “You’d be very bored, little prince. Wouldn’t you rather go play with your friends while I’m at work? Don’t you think that’d be more fun than sitting quietly all day while I do paperwork?”

“No,” he huffed. “I want to go with you.”

“But today is fingerpainting day at daycare. You really like that…”

“I _hate_ fingerpainting,” he spat out, which made her withdraw her hand. Something had happened, and she realized she’d missed it.

“Henry, why do you hate fingerpainting?” The better question was why he didn’t want to go to daycare. If she found out someone had hurt her son, that person would no longer ever have the chance to do it again.

“Because it’s just us, and they all make fun of me.” His little frown deepened, and tears began to shimmer in his big brown eyes.

“Who, Henry? Who is making fun of you?” She was going to make them suffer. No one patronized her son and didn’t pay for the act.

“ _Everyone_ ,” he said in a shaky voice. “Everyone because it’s just us, and they all have two people, and Ms. Jenny says having just two people is okay, but they still call me names when she’s not around.” He looked up at her with anger and hurt in his eyes. “How come they say we’re not a family? We’re a family, aren’t we, Mommy?”

She took in a sharp breath. It made sense now. They must have had the children paint pictures of their families in daycare yesterday, and, now that she considered it, she and Henry were the only unconventional family there.

She wanted to be angry. She wanted to rain down wrath upon the families who somehow had allowed their children to be so ignorant about families that they would make her son feel so bad. She wanted to destroy them all and rejoice in the ashes of what had been their lives.

She wanted total destruction, but…

Henry sniffed, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, and she shook herself out of her moment of vengeance. It could wait.

Reaching out, she picked her little boy up and placed him in her lap. “You and I, little prince, are a family, and we’re just as good of a family as anyone else’s.”

He blinked at her. “We are?”

She hummed in response, giving him a gentle, reassuring smile. “Of course we are.”

“But the others have _two_ , a mommy and a daddy.” He sounded less distressed, but she could still see the pain in his eyes.

“Some families do, and some families have just a daddy, and some families have two mommies or two daddies, and some families have a granny and no mommy or daddy, and…”

“Like Ruby?” He quirked his head in question.

She nodded. “Yes, like Ruby. She has a granny, and all those people are a family.” She gentle gave a pat to his chest, just over his heart with her free hand. “Families are more than just how many people there are, Henry. They’re about who you love. I love you _very_ much, and you and I are a family, too.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh, “I love you, too, Mommy.” Squirming a little, he managed to scoot down enough to rest his head on her shoulder. “Do you think I’ll ever have a daddy?”

She winced. It was too soon for this conversation. “I… I really don’t know, Henry.”

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “Do I have to go today?”

“Yes,” she replied, but the answer sounded hollow. After this rollercoaster moment, she really didn’t want to go to work as badly as he didn’t want to go to daycare. “But only for a little while.” She had to meet with Gold, but that was in a couple of hours. Assuming no emergencies came up, she could cancel plans for the afternoon and pick her son up early.

Maybe they could go to the park? It’d be nice to have a little time with him without worrying about running into the usual suspects.

“How long?” He nuzzled closer to her, gripping her shirt tightly in his little hands.

“Just until lunch, and then I’ll come get you.” She gave him a pat on the back. “But, for me to do that, you have to finish breakfast so we can go.”

He slowly climbed down and then back into his chair. After finishing his cereal and helping clean up, he tugged at hand. “Mommy?”

She mentally steadied herself. Who knew what new curveball he was about to throw at her? “Yes, dear?”

“Can I have ice cream for lunch?”

She chuckled. “We’ll see,” she responded with a shake of her head as she led the way to the car. At least he was feeling better.


	2. Dragons!

“Henry, I think it’s time we went inside, don’t you?” Regina batted away a mosquito and sniffed irritably as she glanced around her backyard. The sun was starting to set, and she was ready to call it day.

She’d spent most of it doing yardwork, which, though exhaustive, was something she found relaxing, and her little boy of five had been ‘helping’ all day. In truth, he’d spent more time playing in the soil than helping plant anything, but she didn’t mind. Time spent with him was never time wasted.

“Hold on, Momma!” He looked up from the pile of soil he’d been digging around in for the past five minutes. “I hafta finish.”

She tiredly chuckled and sank down onto the grass, accepting they weren’t going inside just yet. “What are you finishing, my little prince?”

“I can’t tell you yet,” he declared as he concentrated harder on the dirt. “It’s a surprise.”

With Henry, everything was a surprise, whether she wanted it to be or not. His last surprise had ended in her scrubbing her hallway for twenty minutes to get the marker off and with him sent to timeout and suspended from his favorite television show for a day. Given where they’d been all day, she was confident this surprise, at least, wouldn’t end with him in tears and her cursing the heavens.

“Okay, you come look!” He pointed with grimy hands to the somewhat shaped pile of sole. “I made you a castle.”

She smirked as she shuffled herself across the soft grass to sit next to him. “So you did.” She pulled one gardening glove off so she couldn’t point at various spots on his creation without accidentally destroying it. “Let’s see…” She pretended to really study it. “There’s the moat.” She motioned around the lump of dirt, and smiled as her little boy grinned and nodded happily. “And that must be the drawbridge.” He’d put a little leave where the portcullis would be. He giggled in response. “And that’s where my guards must be standing watch.” She motioned to what she assumed was likely a tower.

His smile beamed. “Yeah! And over there,” he pointed in the middle of the lump of dirt to a little rock he’d embedded in the soil, “is where the knights train.” He looked at her, puffed out his chest, and said in his most serious voice. “I’m going to be a knight so I can protect you.”

“Oh?” She tried to picture him in one of her knight’s uniforms, but the mental picture made her crinkle her nose. That didn’t really suite him. He was a prince, not a knight. “Do I need to be protected?”

“Well…” He looked as though he was truly giving it thought. “No, but,” his smile began to fade, “I want to be a knight.”

“Not a prince?” She lifted his chin up with her ungloved hand. “Being a prince is much better than being a knight.”

“But I want to be the one who gets to slay the dragon,” he declared with a pout.

An image of Maleficent facing down her small son flickered through her mind, and she winced. “I don’t think I’d like that, Henry. You might get hurt, and then who would be here to help me in the yard?”

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t think about that.” He scowled for a moment, eyes unfocused but facing his little soil castle. “But what if the dragon…”

“Henry,” she was amused, and he was being especially cute, but she was also tired, and they both needed a bath. “I have it on good authority that a dragon would never storm my castle.”

He blinked at her. “Huh?”

She took in a deep breath and reminded herself that he was still learning. “I know dragons; one is even my friend. They would never storm my castle.” Well, she was reasonably sure Mal wouldn’t have considered actually storming her castle back in the day. Now? If her friend somehow found her way out of that cave under the town, who knows?

“You have a dragon as a friend?” His eyes grew wide and round.

She mentally kicked herself. He was getting old enough to really know what she was saying now. She really needed to filter better. “I did, but it was a very long time ago.” She stood, brushing the soil off of her pants as she went. “Henry, we really should go inside, dear. It’s bath time.”

“But you know a dragon!” He protested with a shake of his head. “I want to know a dragon!”

“I really would rather you _didn’t_ know that particular dragon,” she said dryly. “Besides, I don’t know where she is anymore.”

“Oh,” he frowned, slowly getting up. “Would you tell me about the dragon if I take a bath?”

She looked down at him and pursed her lips. When had he started learning to bargain? “One story,” she replied with a twitch down of her lips. What was she going to tell him? Most of the stories about her and Mal ended with, ‘…and then we got really drunk, had a good time that I only sort of remember, and I woke up with a terrible hangover and Mal laying on top of me.’

It’s not really something you ever want to tell you child about, let alone your five year old boy.

“Okay!” He perked up at winning a deal and started to run toward the back of the house. “Dragons!” He raised his arms out and pretended to fly, making whoosing noises as he went.

She sighed, letting him fly to the back porch before tell him to stop running and to take off his shoes. He wanted a story about dragons. She wanted him clean. It seemed like a reasonable tradeoff, but, if he started asking for stories about white knights saving sleeping princesses, she was going to have to draw the line. Nothing was worth having to tell a version of that tale, not even if it meant it would get her little prince into the tub.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I guess I'm just going to keep adding to this...


End file.
